I lost my voice when I was seven;
buried in an unmarked grave
where all untold stories go to die.
I learned it’s quite a skill to hold
a lifetime of words beneath your tongue
and not choke on the debris of letters
that fester in the back of your throat;
to swallow truth like a hungry dog with
bared teeth;
willing another to not come close enough
to taste such foul feast upon their lips.
It turns out there is no minute of silence
for silence;
no funeral for people to dress in black
and eat jelly cakes
and cluck tongues over the tragic loss
of life taken too soon.
Innocence taken too soon.
There is only the sound of applause; let a
woman learn silently with all submissiveness.
I am thirty-four when I find my voice again,
yet it is not the first time I speak
which brings me to my knees,
but the first time I am heard.
© Kathy Parker 2019
Day Eleven #PoemADayFeb – First
Too often we find ourselves caught in negative cycles, either our own self-defeating patterns or in our relationships with others. Sometimes it can be a blind spot we don’t see, other times something we see but feel powerless to change or break. Either way, being trapped in these negative cycles shackles us to people who hold us back, to our past defeats, to history that repeats itself, to the versions of ourselves we desire to be free from. Staying in these cycles leaves us disempowered and feeling we have no control over our lives but are held at the mercy of other people or circumstances; forever pulled into a place not of our own choosing.
